CHAPTER IX.

THE A PRIORI ARGUMENT FOR INSPIRATIONAL INFALLIBILITY.

A VERY few words will suffice in dealing with the argument in support of inspirational infallibility which is drawn from à priori considerations of the improbability that such a Being, as we are constrained to believe God is, would make a special revelation of himself to mankind in Christ and yet not secure to the world an infallible record of that revelation.

At the very outset we acknowledge the à priori force of this consideration, its force, that is, antecedently to our comparing our expectations with, and correcting them by, the facts which God has placed within the scope of our vision for the very purpose of our ascertaining the truth and so ridding ourselves of prejudices, that is, of judgments formed à priori or before we were acquainted with the evidence. God having given to one particular age a special and unique manifestation of himself and of his will towards man, it is, without doubt, antecedently probable that He will likewise have caused a special and (if it so seem to any mind) an infallible record of that special revelation. This we are ready to concede. But what then? Are not a thousand suppositions antecedently probable, which yet experience of facts compels us to abandon as not true in effect, however probable they may have appeared in the prospect of expectation?

What could, à priori, be more probable than that God would prevent sin? Yet a bitter and humiliating experience compels us to own that sin, however antecedently improbable, is a dread reality.

It is not too much to say that there is hardly one of our à priori expectations on any subject which the collection of experience does not oblige us to modify if not wholly to reverse.

In this very matter for instance of the probabilities attaching to a special revelation, it is well known that the majority of those who profess and call themselves Christians lay stress on other à priori arguments. And, indeed, is it not obvious that, if an infallible record of revelation be antecedently probable, no less probable is it that there should have been always an infallible guardian to preserve this record and an infallible interpreter to ensure a right comprehension of it? These Roman Catholic à priori arguments for the infallibility of the church, the councils, the popes, &c., are, as we think, rightly negatived by a due observation of the errors which have been manifest in each and all these antecedently probable receptacles of infallibility. In like manner, while we acknowledge that an antecedent probability exists in favour of scriptural infallibility, we are compelled also to acknowledge that the observable facts of scriptural composition wholly reverse that probability and convince us that errors on all sorts of subjects exist in Holy Writ, and show that, however valuable and precious its pages may be, the Bible is not infallible.

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CHAPTER X.

THE A POSTERIORI ARGUMENT FOR INSPIRATIONAL INFALLIBILITY,

ONE more very popular and, we fear, very influential argument for scriptural infallibility remains for us to examine. As the last was the à priori argument or that derived from antecedent probabilities, so the argument we at present canvass may be called the à posteriori or argument from supposed consequences.

When every other consideration has failed to prove the Bible infallible and, when, on every side, it is clear that even inspiration leaves the precious volume fallible, the final and almost universally prevailing argument is, If the Bible be not infallibly inspired, what certainty can we have about the Resurrection of the body or even the Immortality of the soul? How can we be sure that we know what Christ taught or what God would have us to do? To what authority can we appeal as a last resort in all doubts and all controversies? In disproving the infallibility of the Scriptures are you not overthrowing the grounds of all Christian faith and even opening a road that will surely lead the persevering traveller through infidelity into Atheism?

In answer to these and similar questions we hope, in the sequel, to show how a regard for the Bible, which plainly recognises the fallibility of that inspired book, is one of the strongest safeguards against unbelief and

is likely to be a most influential propagator of the Christian religion. But, supposing we could not clear the apparent fallibility of Scripture from any or from all the evil consequences which, it is often asserted, would follow upon the acknowledgment of that fallibility; what then? Are we so sure that the alleged but unproved doctrine of an infallible Inspiration does keep men in the church does afford a plain and acknowledged canon of faith-does do all the good (or any of it) which it is asserted that the avowal of Biblical fallibility would undo? Are not many men unbelievers notwithstanding the alleged infallibility of the Bible? Have not some been driven into unbelief chiefly by this very dogma? Do all the tens of thousands of Roman Catholic believers agree in bowing to Scripture as the alone infallible standard? Does the acknowledgment of the infallibility of this one standard bind in one brotherhood of agreement Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Calvinists and Arminians, and all the other sects even of Protestantism? Has not each sect, and almost every individual, its own (fallible) interpretation of the infallible Book?

But, whatever may be the possible, or even the probable, evil consequences of avowing truth in reference to the popular, and, as we think, perilous notion of Inspirational infallibility, can it be our duty to lie for God? Must we do evil that good may come of it? Ought we to uphold any thing, which we know to be untrue, for the sake of results which we hope will accrue to us and to the world from its upholding? Is not God great and

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good enough to take care of His own cause which, in Christianity as in all things, is the cause of truth? To think of maintaining an untrue doctrine of Inspirational infallibility, for fear of the consequences which may follow upon the acknowledging and enunciating of the truth, shows assuredly a most lamentable want of faith towards Him who, being Almighty, has sent forth to us His Son Jesus, the Anointed, to be the way, the truth and the life and thus to think is, at the same time, directly to disobey the inspired precept "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good;" and to exclude ourselves obstinately from the company of those whose duty it is to "be ready always to give to every man a 66 reason for the hope that is in" them.

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What, we may well inquire, would now have been our position and that of all mankind if a regard to consequences had prevented Jesus and his Apostles from divulging and, at the peril and price of their lives, insisting on those truths which were not inaptly described as "turning the world upside down." How must the existing faith of Jew and Gentile have been shaken and torn to atoms before it could be true that "old things 66 were passed away and behold! all things were become "new!" You send your missionary to the Brahmin, to the Romanist or to the slaves and the slaveholders, and what consequences may not ensue? Nay, what consequences are sure to ensue if mission have any sucyour cess at all? Must not mother be set against daughter and the nearest against the dearest? Did not Jesus so come as not to bring peace but a sword into this evil